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EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

Story
by Sean Sullivan


The End of the End of the End (of the End)

Once upon a time there was a short story. The story was about alienation and ennui and alcoholism and sex and death and love and money among young urban professionals at the start of the 21st Century. It was quite poignant in an odd way and based on a true story (although that was a fact the author did not openly advertise) and set in a bar in Brooklyn and had a generally apocalyptic, albeit strangely laid back, tone. And it was called “The End of the End of the End (of the End).” And it was clever (but not too clever) and moving (but not too moving) and well-written (but not too well-written) and eventually labeled “post-literate” (a term initially meant rather harshly by the critic who coined it but one that very quickly became the battle cry of a whole generation). And it was published in The New Yorker and its author got a book deal out of it and lived happily ever after.

Later, the story was anthologized and became the best-known short story by that author, his signature piece. It was often assigned by high school teachers hoping their students would think them pretty cool for assigning it, a ploy that rarely succeeded. The story was widely considered the prime example of post-literate fiction, in the same way that “Lost in the Funhouse” a half a century before had been considered the prime example of metafiction. Young people of a certain bent tended to connect to the story, and it sometimes inspired them to do things, such as drink or fuck or fall in love or move to Brooklyn or kill themselves or join a monastic order or write post-literate fiction of their own (or even, in a few cases, post-post-literate fiction).

In the late-21st Century, when animals were finally accorded full civil rights, the author’s work briefly went out of vogue, its juicy and vivid descriptions of meat-eating unacceptable to a new generation of ardent vegetarians. By the mid-22nd Century, however, with that famously “misplaced” generation who, among other things, rebelled against the vegetarian state by eating meat in secret after-hours “gabattoirs,” the story was rediscovered and re-embraced, considered ahead of its time in innumerable stylistic and substantive ways, and much imitated, referred to and revered. There was even an “End of the End of the End (of the End)” festival in Brooklyn every year, which involved various forms of hedonistic, post-literate, apocalyptic behavior, readings of affectionately rendered parody/homages, and so on. The story enjoyed a real comeback, was eventually made into several movies and HoloWorld™ spectaculars, and only grew in popularity until 2239, when, as we all know, all human life was extinguished, such that there was no one left to read it (or watch the movies or live the spectaculars). And although certain insect life forms continued to flourish and evolve, they never did bother to learn to read, so, in effect, that was pretty much the end of “The End of the End of the End (of the End).”